Kelly Lee has a delicate handshake belying the strength of her fingers.
She moves them during conversation; sometimes drumming, sometimes outstretched in a fluid motion as though moving a quarter across her knuckles as a magician does to keep nimble for sleight-of-hand trickery.
Her fingers become energized when she plays them across the neck and ribs of her longtime confidant. She calls him Marvin.
Marvin is a bass, handcrafted in 1840s Germany of maple, spruce and ebony.
Marvin had belonged to a musician who played in the orchestra of The Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Lee bought the instrument while a sophomore at Eastman School of Music in Rochester.
Marvin has been making music for more than 165 years. Lee has been playing since a child growing up in Brockport, in upstate New York. Her fingers have been her strength since fourth-grade when she first picked up a cello. She wanted to play the French horn but was told her fingers were too short. She knew better. She now smirks at the misguided and mistaken observation. Strong, lithe fingers are the key to playing bass.
Playing the cello was great, but she was smitten with the bass after seeing a boy get on the school elevator with two other kids helping him maneuver it. She had to handle the cello, though not as large as a bass, all by herself; and she had to use the stairs. With the bass you get an entourage and no stairs to traverse.
At age 12, she made the switch. She immersed herself in the instrument and the school orchestra. She would practice about four hours a day. Growing up in Brockport, she was lucky to be close enough to attend recitals and performances at the Eastman School of Music just a short drive away in Rochester. She kept up with her practice and “lived in the orchestra room” in high school. They needed someone to play the electric bass for a school production of “Little Shop of Horrors,” so she picked up a blue-colored Fender and taught herself to play it. No problem, she said. She still has the guitar, though she didn”™t christen it with a name like its larger, acoustic, wood counterpart.
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In high school, she helped teach lessons and also played in the jazz ensemble. She knew where she was going to college, all she had to do was make it through the audition process that consisted of solo work and recorded performances. She made it and got to study under professor James Van Demark, “one of the great bass virtuosos.”
The conservatory is part of the University of Rochester, so in addition to studying music, Lee also studied public relations. But music consumed her life at school, if there was an ensemble, recital, musical, opera or other event, she was there or involved. While a junior, under the arts leadership program she interned with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, writing press releases and partaking on other communications-related work.
After graduating last year, she landed a job with Co-Communications Inc., a marketing and public relations company in Mount Kisco. While she can only afford a couple hours of practice on her bass each day in her Yorktown Heights home, she is involved with the Broadway Training Center of Westchester in Hastings-on-Hudson. The center provides performing arts training with a Broadway orientation for children and adults. For Lee, the numerous musicals that are performed provide her the opportunity to play in a professional setting.
She likens music to her work in public relations, in that in each she interprets the work of composer and client to the intended audience.
Looking at her manicured fingernails, she realizes she will have to cut them down for practice on an upcoming production. Her fingernails are now too long, made pretty for her wedding two weeks earlier to Mike Lee, who she met at Eastman when he came for a visit from Ithaca College. He is a longtime sideman and co-composer with singer and pianist Tony DeSare.
Some may call it a marriage made in heaven. Her husband is also in PR, and in his spare time he plays ”“ what else? ”“ bass, electric and acoustic.
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